Island of Demons (60 page)
Authors: Nigel Barley
Grits had reproached Walter for selling a vision of Bali-as-Paradise. That was not true. He had known that, in every paradise, there is a serpent but Walter had clutched it to his breast though he knew it would ultimately devour him. The myth that he purveyed was the myth of himself, as a man who had found that contentment that we all seek, who always sat in golden sunshine, who lived a life without the oppression of wage-slavery or anxiety, a Parsifalian Peter Pan for whom every day brought joy and the pleasure of beauty, what he, himself, might have called a
Lebenskünstler
, an artist
at
living. And though we knew that such a path was closed to us, the fact of another's attaining it somehow redeemed the world, as a single holy man's holiness can save us all. That was why the rich and famous beat a path to his door and laid their wealth at his feet. I fingered the stark curved initials of his signature, the magical index of his being. There was a soft tapping from the passage.
“
Nawegang, Pak Rudi. Ajengan sampun siaga
.” Nyoman, formerly the leggy postboy, grown to be my chubby helper, letting me know that lunch was ready. After the Japanese left, it had been necessary to retrain the servants not to bow and hiss as they had been taught. Then, after the Revolution, they were no longer allowed to call you
Tuan
, since this was unsuited to the allegedly egalitarian ethos of the new republic. So many shibboleths. So many taboos.
I stepped out into the sunlight, around the loose tile and settled to my small but appetising lunch, eating with my hands. My neighbour, pottering about his orchids, cackled at me, waggled his watering can in greeting and we did the little mime at each other of “come eat”, “no, please go ahead”, that politeness requires. Then, I lifted my glass, in a toast without words, and sipped the sharp, cold wine.
Sauve qui peut
.
Rogue Raider: The Tale of Captain
Lauterbach and the Singapore Mutiny
by Nigel Barley
It is the First World War and Julius Lauterbach is a German prisoner of war in the old Tanglin barracks of Singapore. He is also a braggart, a womaniser and a heavy drinker and through his bored fantasies he unwittingly triggers a mutiny by Muslim troops of the British garrison and so throws the whole course of the war in doubt. The British lose control of the city, its European inhabitants flee to the ships in the harbour and it is only with the help of Japanese marines that the Empire is saved.
Rogue Raider
is the adventure story of how one ship, the
Emden
, tied up the navies of four nations and how one man eluded their agents in a desperate yet hilarious attempt to regain his native land. It is fictionalised history but a true history that was deliberately suppressed by the authorities of the time as too embarrassing and dangerous to be known. Revealed here, it brings vividly to life the Southeast Asia of the period, its sights, its sounds and its rich mix of peoples. And through it an unwilling participant in the war becomes an accidental hero.
In the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles
by Nigel Barley
Stamford Raffles is that rarest of things â a colonial figure who is forgotten at home but still remembered with affection abroad.
Born into genteel poverty in 1781, he joined the East India Company at the age of fourteen and worked his way up to become Lieutenant Governor of Java when the British seized that island for some five years in 1811. There he fell in love with all things Javanese and vaunted it as a place of civilization as he discovered himself as a man of science as well as commerce. A humane and ever-curious figure, his administration was a period of energetic reform and boisterous research that culminated in his History of Java in 1817 and it remains the starting-point of all subsequent studies of Indonesian culture.
Personal tragedy and ill-health stalked his final years in the East. Yet, though dying at the early age of 44 and dogged by the hostility of lesser men, he would still find time to found the city-state of Singapore and guide it through its first dangerous years. Here, mythologised by the British and demonised by the Dutch, he is more than a remote founding father and remains a charter for its independence and its enduring values.
In this intriguing book, part history, part travelogue, Nigel Barley re-visits the places that were important in the life of Stamford Raffles and evaluates his heritage in an account that is both humorous and insightful.
“A witty, sprightly and elegantly written book” The Sunday Times, UK
“Alive with curiosity ⦠a charming and affectionate book” Times Literary Supplement, UK
“Barley's irreverent and amusing tone ⦠makes his work accessible to all” New York Times Review of Books, USA
About the Author
Nigel Barley was born south of London in 1947. After taking a degree in modern languages at Cambridge, he gained a doctorate in anthropology at Oxford. Barley originally trained as an anthropologist and worked in West Africa, spending time with the Dowayo people of North Cameroon. He survived to move to the Ethnography Department of the British Musem and it was in this connection that he first travelled to Southeast Asia. After forrays into Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and Burma, Barley settled on Indonesia as his principal research interest and has worked on both the history and contemporary culture of that area.
After escaping from the museum, he is now a writer and broadcaster and divides his time between London and Indonesia.
Also by Nigel Barley
The Innocent Anthropologist
A Plague of Caterpillars
Not a Hazardous Sport
Foreheads of the Dead
The Coast
Smashing Pots
Dancing on the Grave
The Golden Sword
White Rajah
In the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles *
Rogue Raider *
(* published by Monsoon Books)
Contents
Rogue Raider: The Tale of Captain Lauterbach and the Singapore Mutiny
In the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles
Published in print by Monsoon Books in 2009
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Monsoon Books
ISBN (epub): 978-981-4358-31-6
ISBN (paperback): 978-981-08-2351-8
Copyright©Nigel Barley, 2009
Cover paiting: “Rehjagd” by Walter Spies. Courtesy of Walter Spies Foundation.
Cover design by Sin E Design (
www.sinedesign.net
)
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